India's seasoned off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has taken a brutal dig at former South Africa opener Herschelle Gibbs for his involvement in the match-fixing during his playing days.

Gibbs may have indulged into Ashwin’s Twitter mention with a thought of banter, but the latter didn’t take it sportingly and went on to remind the ex-Proteas opener of his tainted past.

At first, Ashwin promoted a shoe brand on his official Twitter page and highlighted its comfort to which Gibbs replied: “Hopefully you will be able to run a bit faster now ashwin.”

Herschelle clearly mocked Ashwin’s slow running between the wickets. As soon as the twitteratis picked up Gibbs’ reply, they started trolling Ashwin which led to a savage reply from the Tamil Nadu off-spinner.

“Surely not as fast you did mate, unfortunately I wasn’t as blessed as you were. But I was blessed with a wonderfully ethical mind not to fix games which put food on my plate,” Ashwin retorted.

The 43-year-old Gibbs then clarified by saying it was just a joke from his end.

“Can’t take a joke i see???? anyway moving swiftly on..,” Gibbs replied back to Ashwin’s brutal remark.

Although the 31-year-old Ashwin did reply back, saying that it was also a humour from his side but things have become too bitter between the two cricketers by then.

“I totally believed my reply was a joke too, but look how people and yourself perceived it. I am totally game for this sort of fun mate, we shall dine over this sometime,” Ashwin wote in his tweet quoting Gibbs.

Ravi Ashwin, who is currently out of India’s limited-overs setup, later clarified the reason behind deleting the tweet in which he taunted Gibbs for his involvement in match-fixing.

“What’s sensitive to me isn’t to someone else, and what’s sensitive to you isn’t to me. I want to respect my family of fans and hence pulled the tweet down, and now entertainment over for all my haters. See you later,” Ashwin clarified his stance on the heated exchange.

It is worth mentioning here that Gibbs’ named had emerged out during the match-fixing saga in 1990s when Cricket South Africa had banned some of its cricketers for lifetime, including their captain Hansie Cronje.